Kids still feeling the effects of lockdowns…

[sloanedanger]

I just got caught reading a really interesting thread on Twitter started by a teacher:

“Is anyone else thinking we are starting to see the impact of 2 years of disruption and time at home, due to COVID 19, in schools? Extreme behaviours? Some pupils very emotional and struggling to regulate? Low attendance compared to normal? Winter bugs hitting hard?”

A lot of the comments say Y3 is the worst, others saying Years 7 and 8.

My DS is in Year 2 and often struggles with emotions and self regulation at school. It’s made me think, perhaps there’s a reason why linked to the pandemic. Lockdown was hard, DP and I were home with very young DC, trying to work, poor mental health, emotions high. Very little patience.

With regard to flu, children are vaccinated in school and many schools pay for staff to be vaccinated.

With regard to norovirus, schools call public health or whatever its called now, and get advice if a threshold is met. This generally involves extea cleaning, permission to use bleach, extra handwashing and indeed closures if necessary.

My Yr8 and 9 haven’t been offered a flu vaccine. Norovirus struck down 40 teachers at our school. I was far more ill with that than Covid. And flu. Took me 3 months to recover from flu.

Anyway I’m derailing the thread for a change.
My point is when I say ‘people don’t care about Covid anymore’. I mean other illnesses are far more serious to children. And always have been.

Yes, there is a lot of re-writing of history on this thread. There is also a lot of wilful misunderstanding.
But it's not coming from @noblegiraffe who, from my recollection, made a stirling effort to inform people of the state of affairs in schools at the time and how best we could minimise Covid's impact.
Same old names popping up on this thread, doing their bit to contribute to the mass exodus of school staff from the profession. Well done, all.

No re writing from me. As much as people don’t want others to post, as per usual. Same as during the pandemic.

No point in blaming anyone for highlighting the harm caused. The damage is there and people will talk about it.

"As much as people don’t want others to post, as per usual. Same as during the pandemic."

Who are you suggesting is trying to silence others?

You. I’m surprised you need to ask.

The pandemic response caused damage and people will discuss it on threads like this. Particularly as they felt silenced during it by many on here.

Please explain exactly how my post silences anyone.

@BlueRidge

my recollection is very different

Thread after long thread about ‘how to keep schools open’ which made ridiculous demands and even worse assumptions about how to stop covid being in schools

“If us teachers can’t have every child masked, sitting 6ft apart, a new ventilation system, testing 4x a day, no talking, no singing, all windows open even though it’s -2,….then the risk is too high and we can’t keep schools open”

Or you could read the thread I linked to, hamster which shows that your recollection is bollocks.

Just read a very interesting research paper comparing the impact of school closures in Finland versus not closing the primary schools and pre-school settings in Sweden. Bizarrely it may seem to some - rates of infection were similar in the country that closed schools versus the country that didn’t.

It’s almost as though a virus is going to do what a virus does.

I’ve attached the very interesting findings.

Also claiming children are not big spreaders of Covid (which I believe to be true - I never caught Covid off my children - only other adults ditto most people I know).

So therefore mass testing and isolation of close contacts for weeks on end does seem to have been complete overkill and hugely disruptive to healthy and well children.

Some children isolated for many separate periods of 10 days - even if they were not ill. So much unnecessary disruption.

@hamstersarse
Is that a direct quote?

One thing guaranteed to be bad for the mental health of adults and children is a lot of angry, uptight adults wasting huge amounts of energy on pointing fingers of blame for all their problems at others. There is a lot to learn for every single country in the entire world about how to deal better with a future global pandemic, but that requires constructive consideration of all the evidence, not extremely partisan finger wagging and a refusal to acknowledge any evidence that doesn’t suit the rigid and blinkered viewpoint of the finger-wagging accusers. Yes, a huge amount of harm has been done and continues to be done to children in particular, and that is exacerbated by point-scoring, self-pitying behaviour from the adults around them. Angry people are not very good at listening to each other. If you feel angry because you believe you were entirely right and the powers that be entirely wrong, then you are part of the problem, not the Messiah with the solution.

I think that part of the re-writing of history is to do with people looking at how Covid is now considered mainly mild and that we are mostly vaccinated against it and forgetting that it was a whole different ball-game back then.
It is clear that of course children spread the virus, despite the propaganda machine back in 2020 trying to convince people they didn't. And as they don't live in a vacuum, it was considered necessary to limit their interactions with others for everyone's protection.

A link to the actual paper would be interesting rather than a selective photo of the bits you want people to see.

I don’t walk around being angry in real
life about this so I don’t think questioning whether we did the right thing on a
discussion board is going to have any impact on any child’s mental health.

Blind compliance without questioning or discussing is not a good thing. Especially with regards to governments yielding powers over individual rights to freedom. It’s actually worrying and dangerous if we don’t question and learn.

I don’t blame anyone for being angry about what has happened to our children over the past few years. I’m sure they don’t walk around being angry in front of them. Maybe some are more sad than angry? Are we not allowed to feel emotion about what happened?

I agree that raking over old ground with certain posters is not a good thing. It detracts from the thread. This is all new information coming out now about the mental health of children post lockdown. People are sharing their experiences. The thread should focus on that.

Sweden/Finland

The measured cases of covid-19 weren't much different but that doesn't mean the actual cases were no different. As stated in the discussion "It is likely that
many mild cases in children in Sweden never been detected since testing during
week 12 to 22 mainly focused on persons seeking hospital care."

Yeah I think if you’re going to close schools and have such an impact on children’s education and future then you would want this to translate in to a big drop in the death rate for it to be worth it. Not just a reduction in the number of mild cases amongst young children.

The death rate might have rocketed yet higher had schools remained fully open, of course.

It didn’t in Sweden though.

There were a lot more covid deaths in Sweden than in Finland.

I don't think we can properly compare the over crowded UK to sparsely populated countries like Sweden & Finland.

Re reminders earlier about the suggestion in Scotland about part-time schooling.
I remember thinking it would never work. Because at the time the UK was trying to phase out furlough.
Keyworker / vulnerable kids needed full-time schooling / childcare.
So say they are a third with the other 2/3rds of the class split into groups A&B
The KW kids would be bored shitless listening to the same lessons twice with both groups.
The teacher would end up with 2/3 of the class in front of her at any point in time. And if parents of the other group need childcare where are the kids going?
It was bonkers like many other bonkers SNP half though out ideas.

I teach year 2 and I think children have been profoundly impacted by the pandemic. The children struggle much more with emotional regulation and interacting socially along with a much bigger attainment gap.

Sorry I haven’t RTFT even though it’s my own, I had a crazy few days in work so have only managed to get halfway through the pages as I want to read everything.

In short, I’m so sorry that so many others are now seeing the negative effects too.

It’s actually really surprising to see so many posts against the lockdowns as at the time like loads of you have said, it felt very much like everyone wanted them. My close family and friends were all in favour, which I found quite frustrating. None were in the same situation as us ie with two small kids, including school age come the winter lockdown, so I don’t think had the same long term worries.

I worry about my DS. He doesn’t seem to have suffered academically at the moment but he has very few friends, struggles with remember school rules and doesn’t work very cooperatively with others except for his best friends. I’m sure some of this is personality but also, these are fundamental skills he would’ve really benefitted from learning in nursery/reception/year one.

@avocadotofu i hadn’t read your post when I wrote my latest one. It’s reassuring to hear it’s not just my DS as the other children in his class seem to be much more sociable, there’s bigger groups of friends or they play with several, whereas I know my DS only sticks to two friends.